Volume 40 Issue 4 April 1990

Katharine Hepburn: Her Mother's Daughter

A chip off the old block? Susan Ware looks over the careers of the Hollywood actress and her radical mother and finds reflections of the changing roles and attitudes of women in 20th-century America.

The Unknown Hollywood

In the first two decades of the 20th century escapist fantasy was not the sole diet offered to American audiences by the emerging film industry. Steven Ross relates the mixture of social realism and biting political commentary that inspired both filmmakers and reformers to the silver screen in the Progressive era.

Jan Hus - Heretic or Patriot?

'Truth will conquer' - the Czech historian Frantisek Smahel traces the life and work of his 15th-century compatriot Jan Hus - whose uncompromising criticism of medieval Catholicism stirred national pride and acted as a forerunner of the Reformation.

King John's Maundy

England's royal black sheep may well turn out to be the instigator of the ancient ceremony linking Church and Crown. Arnold Kellett explains how this came about.